Throughout the day storm cells swept across the playa, bringing cold winds and a sharp temperature drop. Despite the suddenly wintery conditions the crew soldiered onward, layering up for warmth and moving around the playa frequently to avoid dust storms kicked up by the high winds.

Playa Restoration 2017… or polar expedition?

Temperatures on the Black Rock don’t typically get this cold until early October. But there’s nothing predictable about the high desert, and today’s weather was a dramatic reminder of just how abruptly things can change here. This also helps explain why Playa Restoration works as hard as we do when we can, as one sunny day can easily be followed by a week of rain, forcing us off the playa and threatening to derail our work entirely.

Thankfully, today never quite reached that point, with only intermittent light precipitation. Mostly it was a game of cat and mouse, as small white-outs kept appearing and forcing us to relocate to another area with better visibility. In this fashion we were able to complete a full day’s work, albeit without the steady, unbroken rhythm that comes from making steady, uninterrupted progress along a single arc of the city.

Spirits on the lines were still high, despite the inclement weather

By day’s end we had not only managed to complete the swing around the front of the city that we’d begun on Tuesday, sweeping between Esplanade and Ceremony from 8:00 all the way to 2, but we also pushed back inwards, sweeping Ceremony to Fire from 6:30 to 7:30.

As with yesterday, the majority of the blocks we swept came up green. But one notable camp delivered an ironic surprise. We wound up grading MOOP Map HQ—Playa Restoration’s own headquarters—as yellow (with a spot of red).

D.A., the Playa Restoration Manager and camp lead for MOOP Map HQ, explains: “The MOOP Map reflects what the line finds, regardless of where we find it. We could do our work on a map without any camp names or boundaries and it would come up exactly the same. And to our standards MOOP Map HQ just wasn’t green this year. And that’s just what it was.”

MOOP Map HQ — located at the corner of 5:30 and Esplanade

So what happened? And what can be learned from it?

“Ultimately, I never made the time to lead a line sweep of my own camp. Other aspects of Playa Restoration’s growing leave no trace operations kept taking priority. And the next thing you know, MOOP Map HQ was the last thing on my list. We weren’t very messy—a 15 minute line sweep would have earned us a green. But I kept throwing all of my resources and my attention everywhere but my own camp.”

“But,” he adds sagely, “that’s exactly how this sort of thing happens.”

Dominic “D.A.” Tinio

This, D.A. explains, is why it’s so important that each camp have a designated LNT lead, with few or no other competing responsibilities.

“You need someone whose only job is managing your leave no trace efforts. Not your art project, not your shade structure, sound system, or bar. Those may all be important, but with limited resources and no dedicated advocate, LNT tends to get shortchanged.”

Overconfidence due to prior successes can also create the conditions for an LNT slip-up.

“Since we first created the MOOP Map in 2006, our camp has always been green. If your camp has always gotten a green, it’s easy to assume that it always will, and focus your resources elsewhere. But leaving no trace doesn’t just happen. It’s something you have to work at every year.”

The DPW Trebuchet throws the first of several flaming pianos. Photo by Andrew from awesomephotography.ca

“MOOP Map HQ is the camp that set up a trebuchet to throw a flaming piano and then cleaned it up in 7 minutes. We live and breathe LNT. We’re really good at it. But experience isn’t some magic substitute for doing a line sweep.”

“MOOP is decreasing. We’re seeing less and less red, less yellow, and more green. 2017 is shaping up to be the greenest MOOP Map yet. Ultimately I’m happier about all the camps that are improving and earning green than I am unhappy about us being marked yellow.”

Who MOOPs the MOOP Map?

For other camps that don’t get green this year, he offers this encouragement: “I believe Burning Man is good. There’s immeasurable goodness happening. But it’s also hard. It’s dusty and it’s crazy and it’s an intense experience. And sometimes your cleanup effort doesn’t go perfectly. And that’s okay. Just keep doing better, learn from the feedback, and we all can improve together.”

Of course, the irony of Playa Restoration’s own camp being graded as yellow by Playa Restoration isn’t lost on D.A..

“All we had to do was one final line sweep,” he says, laughing and shaking his head. “That’s what I’m always telling people. Just do your line sweeps.”

On that humorously cautionary note, here’s a look at how the MOOP Map stands after Day 3.

>> Remember, this map is only a rough draft. For the final MOOP Map, wait until the new year and contact the Placement department. <<

Lucky Charms is one of four Scribes this year

MOOPers on the storm

Very French

Belle consults with John Bastard

Muscle Tits dumps her load

Starchild surveys his line

F’n Andy rejects the conventional notion of a “chair”

Today was a day for all the layers

Max drives one of our trucks. Thanks Max!

Jedi shows off the latest in Resto fashion: flannel and knitwear
]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/building-brc/moop-map-2017-day-3-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-irony/feed/9Bikeshttps://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/survive-and-thrive/bikes/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/survive-and-thrive/bikes/#commentsMon, 25 Sep 2017 16:25:15 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43658You need a bike. And you need to lock it. Or you need to borrow a Yellow Bike, and follow the rules. You can’t park in the street and (if you borrow a Yellow Bike) you need to wear pants.

Monday also served to help newcomers grow accustomed the rhythm of Restoration, as well as giving veterans a useful refresher. Most of us only do this once a year after all, and it can take a minute to get back in the groove.

With favorable weather—plus a full day of experience under their belts—the 2017 All-Star Playa Restoration team was primed for success. We lined up in some of our largest formations ever, quickly and at times seemingly effortlessly. Even the often-critical line bosses were impressed.

A line sweep nearly 200 strong

“This is a perfect line,” Barack Obama bragged. “See how they’re staying so evenly spaced out without me having to say anything? They’ve got it going on!”

Perhaps this newfound spatial awareness can be partially attributed to another Playa Restoration first: beginning the day with a short yoga class, led by DPW Bike Shop Manager Ballyhoo Betty and set to a relaxing soundtrack of… doom metal?

Betty explains: “I study a form of yoga that involves a lot of chanting, mostly in Sanskrit. But when I became a teacher I knew that would be too weird for most of my friends. So I had to find something else that could serve a similar function as the chants—mainly providing a rhythm for everyone to coordinate their pace and their breathing. Doom metal was perfect!”

Sun salutations are 1000% more awesome here

“Back home in Austin I teach a class called Doom Metal Yoga every week now. It’s free, because I want it to be accessible. As a result it’s attended by everyone from total beginners to experienced yoga instructors, which is a fun challenge for me as a teacher.”

When several DPW friends complained of soreness after the first day of line sweeps, Betty decided to offer a shortened version of her weekly class to the Playa Restoration crew.

Taking advantage of the brief gap between the crew’s arrival on the shoreline and roll call, Betty threw a boombox down on the playa and let people know she was about to lead a short yoga class. Then she cranked up the metal and got started.

“Ballyhoo” Betty Benedetti and her boombox

“Resto is more physically demanding than people realize. Not only are you walking all day, but you’re continually bending over, reaching, and kneeling. Yoga is a perfect way to check in with your body, get centered, and stretch everything out before starting work.”

The crew seems to agree.

“This is awesome!” enthused Bullwinkle. “I may have had a little too much to drink at the saloon last night, and now I feel right as rain. We should do this every morning!”

I concur, and look forward to Doom Metal Yoga becoming a new Playa Restoration tradition.

Energized by this workout and facing ideal playa conditions, the Resto crew had a powerhouse day, sweeping the remaining back blocks between 6:30 and 10:00. We then continued on to the front of the city (Esplanade through C) starting at 10:00 and reaching as far as 8:00 before wrapping up for the day. Though not shown on this map, we were also able to sweep Gate Road and Greeters.

Here’s a look at the Day 2 MOOP Map. Overall, it was another predominantly green day, with only a few notable interruptions.

>> Remember, this map is only a rough draft. For the final MOOP Map, wait until the new year and contact the Placement department. <<

D.A. briefs the crew

The future’s so bright, Citizen has to wear really big shades
]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/building-brc/moop-map-2017-day-2-the-line-sweepers-new-groove/feed/18Why Am I Still Here? The Ties That Bind Us to Black Rock Cityhttps://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/serious-stuff/why-am-i-still-here-the-ties-that-bind-us-to-black-rock-city/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/serious-stuff/why-am-i-still-here-the-ties-that-bind-us-to-black-rock-city/#commentsThu, 21 Sep 2017 20:36:11 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43573Back when I was only four Black Rock Cities in, I’d overhear people who were in their 15th, 16th, year say that they didn’t come back for the art or the adventure or the sense of possibility, anymore – they were really coming back for the community.

And I thought to myself: “that’s some bullshit right there.”

10 years in, I need to re-evaluate. Those people haven’t changed their minds, but I have.

One of the pieces I’ve written here that I would most change if I could was called “There’s a reason so many Burning Man friendships don’t work out anywhere else.” It explored the phenomenon of going out to the desert and meeting all these people who you feel so open, so intimate with, so close to, who become important touchstones in your story, but who you don’t bother keeping up with when you leave, and who don’t really make an effort to keep up with you either. Maybe you’re Facebook friends, but you’re not in each others’ lives.

I called them “Burner Buddies,” and wrote:

“Burning Man pries open our psyches in a rare fashion: to thrive in this environment you have to open yourself up to radical possibility. That makes it easier to make friends, fall in love, feel connections, and share psychic space – not because the other people are so special but because you have discovered how to say “yes” more often and more deeply. When you get back to the real world, where you are constantly saying “no,” it’s hard to keep that going. Those beautiful intimacies disappear.

Perhaps the post-burn depression would be easier to manage for some of us if we went in understanding that these unusually powerful relationships are usually transient. That you go to a liminal city to have a liminal experience, and in a way become someone new while you’re there. And that you have deep, profound, meaningful experiences with people who are also someone different while they are there … and that everything but the feelings is going to vanish in the exodus.

And that’s okay. Amazing, even.

It would be a stretch to say I’ve made a lot of friends at Burning Man, but I’ve got the best fucking Burner Buddies in the world.”

And that’s all true. There’s something relevant and important there. But … it’s not as true, or true in the same way, 10 years in as it was four.

Today, it would be fair to say that I look forward to the art, and I’m keenly interested in the adventure, and even that I crave the sense of open possibility that Burning Man provides. But those are enticements. What binds me to Burning Man, the thing that really holds me here now, is indeed “the community,” both as specific people who I may only get one chance to see this year, and as an abstract entity which it matters if I am a part of.

The old timers were right: I just wasn’t there yet. But I also didn’t realize, over time, that I was getting there. I didn’t know that this shift was happening. So what was it? What changed?

Part of it is surely just that you feel closer to people you’ve known for 10 years than people you’ve known for four, even if it’s just a week or so at a time.

But Burning Man also changed me over time (this is quickly becoming the theme of this series of posts), which means that the people I know through Burning Man are people with whom I went through profound personal changes. They were witnesses to it, participants in it (sometimes unwitting), and catalysts for it.

Back then, even if many of these people had kept up with me during the rest of the year, I couldn’t have been as open and present with them in the rest of my life as I had been at Burning Man. I wouldn’t have known how. I had to learn how to be the person who belonged in that community, first on playa, and then, in a much slower process, off of it. Four years in, that process was still in its early stages; 10 years in, it has happened.

How it happened, the mechanism of that change, seems especially important. I have never in my life been one for joining communities – I’ve always been the person who walks around their perimeter but never steps inside. I had thought Burning Man would work the same way, and for a while it did, because in your early years Burning Man is just one more community (and set of communities) that you can join. What I had not understood is that if you do this long enough, it becomes a set of communities that you build. And that is a very different thing.

On the macro level, of course the “Burning Man” community existed before me and without me. But on the micro level, many of the “communities” of Burning Man to which I most specifically belong did not exist before: they were communities that we created together as we were creating ourselves. Sometimes it happened through years of collaborative work, sometimes through specific events that have since become origin stories that we tell strangers when they ask “who are you?” Sometimes we simply fell in together, and that was that. But however it happened, it wasn’t so much signing up for a pre-existing thing as it was creating something new together – very much in the way that Burning Man isn’t about a prefabricated experience that you can purchase, but a unique experience that you co-create.

I didn’t even know that I was creating community at the time, let alone how much I would come to value it. But now there is a community of people – multiple communities of people – that I helped build as they built me, whose center of gravity is Black Rock City.

In many ways, I suspect that the other factors – the art, the adventure, and all the rest – are more important to during that process of becoming and creating. It’s not that we value them any less, but we learn how to bring that into our daily lives. We don’t need to go to Burning Man for art and adventure and possibility any more. But if we want to share these things with the people who made it meaningful in the first place – that we might need to go back for.

Photo by Phillipe Glade

]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/serious-stuff/why-am-i-still-here-the-ties-that-bind-us-to-black-rock-city/feed/8What’s Changed in 20 Years? (One More Perspective)https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/tales-from-the-playa/whats-changed-in-20-years-one-more-perspective/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/tales-from-the-playa/whats-changed-in-20-years-one-more-perspective/#commentsThu, 21 Sep 2017 16:18:22 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43529There have been some great posts about what has changed at Burning Man. For me, the big shifts over the last twenty years have been in Police Presence, Technology, and Connectivity/Immediacy.

I remember when glow sticks were the hot night time tech! Then E-L wire blew everyone’s minds. Seems so quaint now. Watch for more.

2002-2017
]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/tales-from-the-playa/whats-changed-in-20-years-one-more-perspective/feed/21MOOP Map 2017: Day 1 — Killing Time Til Resto Is Overhttps://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/building-brc/moop-map-2017-day-1-killing-time-til-resto-is-over/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/building-brc/moop-map-2017-day-1-killing-time-til-resto-is-over/#commentsThu, 21 Sep 2017 01:54:45 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43533There’s a popular DPW saying that goes “Killing time ‘til Resto”. Often seen as a button or a patch, the implication is that, compared to Playa Restoration, everything else, from your year-round work in the default world, to DPW’s pre-event setup, to the burn itself, is all merely preamble: dead time, defined only by its relationship to the singular, peak experience of Resto. It’s a sentiment that recalls high wire artist Karl Wallenda’s famous assertion that “Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting.”

According to Playa Restoration veterans, once you’ve worked Resto, the rest is just waiting.

Is this just more DPW snark, or an earnest attempt to communicate something important and true? Why would 180 people volunteer to remain in the desert long after Burning Man has ended and their campmates have gone home? Is Playa Restoration really that special? And why does MOOP matter anyway?

Welcome to the 2017 MOOP Map Blog, where I’ll try to answer all these questions and more!

The big news this year is the size of the Resto team. As mentioned above, we number over 180 strong, and draw from virtually every department on playa, including Rangers, Gate, ESD, DPW, and Census. And we have more volunteers from theme camps than ever before. Once almost unknown outside of DPW, Playa Restoration has gradually become one of the most sought-after volunteer positions at Burning Man.

While this growth has created some new logistical challenges, it has allowed Playa Restoration to significantly expand our efforts, including expanding from 3 MOOP lines to 4, allowing us to cover more ground at once, and the creation of a brand new “Pre-Restoration” crew, which started line sweeping some areas of the city as early as two weeks ago. (I’ll write more about Pre-Resto in another post.)

It is my pleasure to present to you the 2017 All-Star Playa Restoration Team:

By this point in the season we’ve all moved off-playa and back to the neighboring town of Gerlach. After breakfast each morning the Resto crew piles onto several repurposed school buses for transport onto the Black Rock Desert. It’s a weird, dusty commute, made stranger by the memories of childhood the yellow buses evoke. Imagine attending high school with a bunch of punk rock circus clowns somewhere on Mad Max’s Fury Road and you’re partway there.

GET ON THE BUS!

Upon reaching the shoreline, MOOP sticks were distributed and roll call was taken. For all the shenanigans of Resto, the desert remains a harsh and mortal place and nobody here takes that for granted. Keeping an accurate head count of the entire crew is critical to safety, and this year that job falls to King Louie.

Louie, a veteran of oth the DPW and the Oregon Country Fair, takes roll for the entire crew on arrival at the shoreline, after lunch, and before the crew departs the playa, whether at the end of the work day or due to an emergency change in the weather. With the nearest town some 20 miles away, it is critical that no one be missed or accidentally left behind—especially in a dust storm.

King Louie calls roll

With roll call completed, D.A. introduced the assembled crew to the MOOP Map and explained the work ahead. D.A. is the Playa Restoration Manager, a role he originated—along with the entire concept of Playa Restoration. He’s dedicated the last 18 years of his life to this program, which may explain why, during Monday’s DPW meeting Cobra Commander introduced D.A. as “the living embodiment of Playa Restoration”. Just how committed is D.A. to Resto? They say that if you cut him, his blood leaves no trace.

D.A. introduces the MOOP Map

The MOOP Map is both our guide and our goal. Over the next two weeks, the Playa Restoration team must cover every single block of Black Rock City, collecting any remaining micro-MOOP and assessing the overall condition of each area they traverse. This information then gets transferred back onto the MOOP Map, with each day’s progress being marked in red, yellow, or green to indicate the relative cleanliness of a given area.

Today Resto began our work in the back blocks of the city, sweeping in clockwise from 2:00. Due to high winds from the southwest we soon loaded back onto the buses, redeploying at 6:30 so that we could walk counter-clockwise and place the winds at our back.

Getting in formation on Barack Obama’s line

“Resto is a dance with the weather,” observes D.A. “This desert can change in a moment, and you have to respect that. Weather can be your ally. Or, if you try to fight it, your worst enemy.”

Historically, the Black Rock desert turns harsh and cold in early October. This year that seasonal change has arrived earlier, and the Playa Restoration team began their labors under dramatic and threatening skies, with cold winds that gusted over 40mph.

“This is perfect Resto weather!” says TonyDollarzzz, a 7 year Resto veteran. “Okay, so this wind is insane. But I’d rather MOOP under cloud cover than clear skies any day.”

TonyDollarzzz walks the line

With the wind at our backs and an unprecedented number of volunteers we were able to make excellent progress. Our pace was also helped by the cleanliness of the city. The less MOOP we find, the more steadily the lines can move. On the MOOP Map, an even walking pace is indicated with green. Today, block after block kept coming up almost entirely green.

“The better the participants do, the more manageable our job becomes. Without the Leave No Trace (LNT) efforts of the citizens of Black Rock City, this would be an impossible task,” D.A. explains. This is an important point, and one many people misunderstand. “The fact that we find MOOP shouldn’t be seen as a failure on the part of the participants. Rather, the fact that we find so little is a huge success. There’s no other event of this size whose participants are so effective at LNT. And they’re getting better every year. It’s amazing.”

In the morning there were concerns that we might need to cut the day short if the wind grew any stronger (which can cause whiteouts that make it impossible to work). But apart from a single runaway MOOP bucket the crew proved more than up to the challenge presented by the weather. After lunch the decision was made to continue through the afternoon, and the 2017 Playa Restoration Team was able to complete a full day of work. This meant that we covered more than half of the city, sweeping blocks H-L from 6:30 all the way to 2:00.

Scribes at work

Back in Gerlach, the Scribes had the job of translating their lines’ progress onto the MOOP Map, which we can share with you below. It’s important to understand that this is NOT the final map, but a work-in-progress. This rough draft will undergo further refinement throughout Resto and beyond in order to integrate and reconcile all the various data collected during line sweeps. (If you want to see the final results of the MOOP Map, contact the Placement department in the new year.)

Into the great wide open…

John Bastard leads his team into position

Juicy Jake drives one of the Oscillator trucks

BuBu is here to fluff you up

Wee Heavy, dressed for Resto success

Honey Dijon

Bright Eyes

Playa Restoration — Do you have what it takes?

What we like to see: empty playa
]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/black-rock-city/building-brc/moop-map-2017-day-1-killing-time-til-resto-is-over/feed/21Hottest Year Everhttps://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/shenanigans/hottest-year-ever/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/shenanigans/hottest-year-ever/#commentsTue, 19 Sep 2017 22:44:48 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43526The playa was so hot this year, everyone of every gender was manspreading.

All week long, the highest I got was from the heat. The worst hangover I had was from the heat.

Thermometer watching was a thing this year. One afternoon, I had a reading of 119°F in the shade. I swore my thermometer was broken; it only goes to 120°. This was the same thermometer that read 35°F on Tuesday morning after Exodus last year.

The Black Rock Desert will test your physical limits. Sometimes it’s an endurance test, pushing your boundaries. I know I hit the wall more than once this year. But the turmoils we endure — whether it’s being stuck in traffic, having your gear break or get lost or stolen, suffering in the face of weather conditions or sleep deprivation — all of this hardship makes the brilliant moments even more beautiful when we finally make it there.

And hey, we do our best to make ourselves comfortable. The amount of food and drink gifted on the playa hits new heights each year. If you have the nose for it, there are foodie excursions all around. By midweek, I had dined on salmon three meals in a row at three different camps. I ate food from a Beverly Hills caterer and a top-ranked Manhattan restaurateur. I had Indian food, cucumber sandwiches, ceviche. And bacon. Lots of bacon. And grilled cheese. Burners do it right. Bloody marys and mimosas were commonplace. I had an amazing piña colada. I couldn’t help thinking, what if you spent all year planning Piña Colada Camp, and then it’s one of those years where we’re all bundled up in faux fur and it’s 37 degrees Fahrenheit outside before calculating the wind chill factor?

This wasn’t one of those years, though.

By this point in Burning Man history, one can’t help but notice how much money people are willing to throw at being comfortable on playa. However you want to classify this growing melange of plug-and-play, turnkey or fashion model camps — whatever you want to call them — I’m enjoying it. It’s easy to make friends with these folks, especially if you know how to interact with the various staff. There’s a careful balance some of these groups are missing however. If you’re serious about flying scores of people to the Black Rock Desert who don’t know how to install a zip tie and think a Phillips screwdriver is the name of a cocktail — people whose only contribution is buying custom bedazzled aviator goggles in SoHo — you’re going to need a lot of support staff. There seems to be a happy balance in the best of these large, unlimited budget camps when there’s one staffer per four guests. (Crazy to imagine, isn’t it?)

All week long in this one camp, it was easy to gauge the strain, seeing the workers coping with water leaks from their shower trailer where an endless parade of sparkleponies were taking three showers each per day. At least these workers were all getting paid. I hope.

In one of these huge, new-ish big-budget camps, I met one of the organizers, and we had a nice chat. When they realized I had a quarter century of history attending the event, they got apologetic about their excesses, and I immediately corrected them. From as far back as I can remember, Burning Man has been proudly populated by people who would wear a tuxedo in the desert to drink out of martini glasses. The more extravagantly absurd and impossible the better. Carry on.

One side effect of this lifestyle is clearly horrible, though, which is the situation with bicycles left on the playa. At these big camps full of jetsetters — many of whom are provided bikes to which they have no particular attachment — I suspect few people lock their bikes, and when one of those camp guests’ first bike is stolen, all bets are off, and there’s this cascade of random bikes being stolen and later dropped on playa. The abandoned bikes left behind are getting worse and worse; a few days after exodus the playa is a macabre bicycle graveyard.

But the Burning Man community is great at solving horrible problems. There’s got to be some way that these big turnkey camps can start off with clearly labeled, recycled green Community Bikes that boldly say “free to ride” on them or something, so it’s clear which ones are okay to hop on without warning. Maybe they have a yellow and green light or something, a clear identifier that this specific bike is not loved and cared for by anyone in particular.

And everyone else, if you don’t want to lose your bike to the harsh reality of the gift economy, remember to lock it up at all times. It can be a really long walk back to camp.

We’ll get this one figured out. Burning Man is at its best when it conjures creativity, inspiration, ingenuity and problem solving. No matter how many times you’ve been there — or if it’s your first time — this is going to be forced on you with unexpectedly great results.

Top photo by John Curley

]]>https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/opinion/shenanigans/hottest-year-ever/feed/43The Things I Left In The Temple.https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/philosophical-center/spirituality/the-things-i-left-in-the-temple/
https://journal.burningman.org/2017/09/philosophical-center/spirituality/the-things-i-left-in-the-temple/#commentsTue, 19 Sep 2017 15:36:58 +0000https://journal.burningman.org/?p=43519I loved the theme from the start. It turned up the volume on all that is deep and sacred about Burning Man.
It took me years before I had the courage to say that Burning Man was my “Religion.”
But this is it. I’ve followed it’s traditions. I’ve created my own.
I’ve found a calling and a congregation. And a temple.
This video is about my experience with the Temple this year.
I am so grateful to everyone who designed, built, protected, & contributed to that magical space. Thank God it exists. Well, *did* exist. Does exist.

The end of Burning Man is almost as nebulous as the beginning, because it happens at so many different times for different people.

For most folks, the end came as you rattled down Gate road, washboard bumps shaking you silly as you plowed through deep drifts of dust.

For others, the end came a couple of weeks later, at the end of strike. Everything had been put back into containers and taken back to the ranch for next year. And everyone came together for de-Fence day, when nine miles of trash fence was rolled up and stored for next year.

And for some others, the end won’t come for several more weeks. The playa still must be MOOPed from one end to the other, and the Resto team started its work today. They’ll be looking for any stray bits of humanity that might threaten the “leave no trace” ethos of the event and jeopardize the BLM permit.

For us, though, the end came swiftly, suddenly, and decisively. We knew beyond any doubt that we had been in the desert long enough, and that it was most definitely time to go.

—

The last bar standing

James and John, two Burners from Santa Cruz, have always been a little indeterminate about their departure date from Burning Man. Maybe that’s why they were still around on Tuesday after the event, on the outer edges of the city, sitting near a pop-up bar and waving at people to come have a beverage.

“The Last Bar Standing” was spray-painted across the front of their shade, and that’s pretty much what it was – the last bar standing. A few stragglers were making their way out of the city, and most of them didn’t stop, but there were a few who decided, oh, what the hell, one more adventure won’t hurt.

Mathew and Scott were two of the drop-ins, and Scott was behind the bar as we rolled up. The two of them had been there most of the day, because their station wagon broke down as they began their departure. But here’s where their story takes a decided Burning Man turn: Two nearby campers, both mechanics, volunteered to go to Reno to pick up a new radiator, then come back to the playa to install it. So as Mathew and Scott waited for them to return, they were making the best of a pretty good situation.

For Mathew, a first-time burner, this was the capper to an amazing week. “You know,” he said, “my expectations [for Burning Man] were so big, it was bound to break my heart … but nope.”

Scott was having a good time behind the bar, welcoming new arrivals and concocting refreshing beverages from what was left of the supplies. “I’ve been telling him forever that he’d make a great bartender,” Mathew said. And just before the burn, Scott had been fired from a job he hated, “so maybe now he’ll listen to me,” Scott said. We hope there’s an establishment in Portland that will give Scott a shot.

—

Stinger knew what she had found, but she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Remarkably, in a place that is so fond of ritual and ceremony, no one had made much of a deal about pulling the Golden Spike out of the ground. As you probably know, the Golden Spike marks the spot where the Man is built. It is an actual spike, spray-painted gold, and a couple of hundred people take turns hitting it into the ground with a sledgehammer. The ceremony takes place at the end of July, and it marks the both the beginning and the center of Black Rock City.

But what happens when the Spike is no longer needed? Apparently … nothing. It is removed without much fanfare over the course of the Man build, or prior to the torching of the site on burn night.

But this year, the year of the Temple of the Golden Spike, the spike was never removed from its place in the floor of the playa. And now, almost a week after the Man and his pagoda had gone up in flames, and six weeks and a day after it had been pounded into the ground, here was the spike.

Stinger, rooting around in the ashes as part of her cleanup work, discovered it. And because she has good instincts, she didn’t pull it up right away – she went and found Coyote, the superintendent of Black Rock City, and asked what she should do.

“I was just going to pull it up and give it to Tony (Coyote),” she said. But Tony, also with good instincts and a sense of the moment, decided that he wanted to be there when it came out of the ground.

Coyote said, “It’s the first time we’ve recovered the spike since the last time the Man was standing on the ground,” which would have been in the late 1990s. “This’ll go to the Smithsonian,” he said, referencing an upcoming exhibit at the museum.

Stinger muscled the stake puller around the spike, rocked back and forth a few times, and just like that, the spike was free. There were only four people on hand to witness the occasion. And that seemed wrong, given the pomp and circumstance surrounding its planting in the ground. Maybe next year extracting the spike will be more of a thing, but for this year, it was just another indicator that it was time to go home. The circle of the season was complete.

—

Days after the event officially ended, the whiteouts that we had been dreading began to roll in, with the extra added attraction of rain. Nothing makes cleanup more difficult than putting everything away while it is covered in mud.

“Whiteouts are terrifying but amazing,” Allison was saying as she worked on the deconstruction of First Camp.

She was describing how she and Andrej and some others had gotten caught in a whiteout on the way back to camp, but that was just a tease of what was in store for us.

Larry Harvey his own self was a little late in leaving this year, too. He said he wanted to watch the desert come back, which was a lot of what the rest of us were doing, too. We had work to do, but we could also be amazed at how beautiful the ever-more-barren landscape was becoming. It was a form of decompression – the big event was over, and most everyone was gone, but there were many small moments to savor.

There’s a saying among DPW people that they are “Killin’ Time till Resto.” In Gerlach, the locals say, “Is it October yet?” That’s because right after Burning Man, the rocketeers come to town for their big annual launchings. And then the hunters come. The town stays hopping for most of September, and the people can get tired and burned out, just like they do on the playa.

When the cold winds blow, it is a relief. “Winter is the time to rest and sit on the money you earned in the summer,” the waitress at Bruno’s said. “My husband hates the snow, he’s from Florida, but I tell him winter is the time to slow down and enjoy yourself.”

—

The beast came over the hills, looking like fog

During the tear-down, just as during the build, there’s a get-together of one kind or another, because our time together at summer camp is coming to an end. One night the Yellow Bike shop Recycle Camp will have a whisky and bacon party. Another night Illumination Village will have a block party to use up all their leftover propane. The next night there’s a kickball game at the Joint Operations Command center.

The big daddy of them all, though, is the Last Supper. It’s the last meal that will be served to DPW workers on the playa. The Commissary tent will come down the next day, and everyone will move back into town.

The Last Supper is an event of high fashion. People dig out clothes that they’ve kept wrapped in plastic for weeks so that they can look sharp for the Last Supper. There will be candlelight, and wine, and good food, and the best company.

But this year the good times at Last Supper lasted about 10 minutes before the desert started insisting that it was time to go home.

—

Taking refuge

“I just want to say thank you,” Chaos was saying the next day. “Thanks for getting up and being here this morning. Everybody who’s here has proven that they can do this, that they’re tough, that they’re DPW.”

There were bleary eyes and there was lots of coughing at the morning meeting. But what was left of the city looked … beautiful, like it had been covered in new-fallen snow.

A blizzard of dust had roared through Black Rock City just as the Last Supper was starting. What had been a beautifully clear evening had turned into a lung-choking nightmare in a matter of moments.

You may have weathered a few dust storms yourself, so you may think you have an idea of what it was like. But this one was a monster – stronger, thicker and darker than any we’ve experienced. Coyote, who’s been coming here for more than 20 years, called it the worst he’d ever seen. Rusty of the Transpo team, who’s been coming to Black Rock for most of his life, said it was one of the worst he’d ever experienced, too.

So we won’t get hyperbolic, but we’ll simply say that this one was ridiculous. All those nice clothes? Trashed. The nice dinner of Cornish game hens? Covered with a quarter inch of dust in mere moments. And the good company? You could barely see who was sitting across the table from you. It was bad.

And then it got scary.

Flaps in the commissary tent started coming loose, and you began to wonder what it would be like to be trapped beneath all that canvas. “The air gets used up fast,” Coyote said. Of course you had no goggles, no flashlight, no knife, because hey, this was a fancy dinner, you wouldn’t need any of that.

Rangers and emergency service people came around with dust masks. Breathing was difficult, and getting worse. Then some people were led into the nearby Fluffers office, where you could close the door against the dust. Gate folks opened up some living containers and their main office, too. We followed lines of string hung in the darkness to get there.

A couple of hours later, there was a slight break and we made a run for our trailer near Center Camp.

—

The morning after

So there was Chaos the next morning, thanking people for persevering, and reminding them that there still was work to do. “This is a different season than Burning Man,” he said. “We’re in September now, and it’s different out here. It gets cold, it’s windy … it’s unpredictable. … It could happen again. It could happen in the day, it could happen in the middle of the night. … So, just make good decisions when you’re out there, take care of each other. … Let’s just try to be safe and get the remainder of the work done.”

There was a ton of work to do the day after the big storm. The big “Move-a-palooza,” as Makeout Queen calls it, would see about 70 trailers towed from the playa to Gerlach. The city would be virtually empty by nightfall. But Cobra Commander tried to make sense of what happened the night before.

“Today’s instructions are simple, in case you did not get the subtle message from nature: Get the fuck out of here. … It’s time pack up and move off the playa.”

And so we did.

We’ll try to make sense of our time at Burning Man later. We’ll think the big thoughts, figure out the life lessons, try to make sense of the things we experienced. But for now, it was good enough to have reached clarity about one single thing: For us, it was time to go.